Abstract Cohesion is a relationship between elements of a text where proper interpretation and understanding of one element depends on another. It thus serves to relate elements of a text to each other. Cohesive relationships are of different types: substitution, ellipsis, lexical relationships, and reference. It is the last, i.e. Reference that we are concerned with in this paper. The paper falls into four sections, each of which is devoted to discuss an aspect related to this cohesive device. The first section deals with the CONCEPT of reference in a number of disciplines; section two sheds light on TYPES of reference with special emphasis on PERSONALS and DEMONSTRATIVES. Section three adopts Halliday & Hasan's model of analysing cohesion. It briefs their model as far as REFERENCE is concerned. To prove the validity and adequacy of this model in analysing reference as a cohesive device, a 23-sentence text is analysed. The paper ends with some concluding remarks that are attained from the previous discussion of reference.